Easy Scandinavian-Style Bread

October 8, 2015

...ough starter, take on the mantle (or apron?) of Household Baker, and start making these loaves myself, but I’m already taking on extra chores with him off his feet, so I’m not inclined to take up this one as well. Yet we can’t live two months without good bread. What to do? Fortunately, I’ve found a solution to our bread crisis: a perfectly good yeasted recipe which makes a dense whole grain loaf with minimal effort. No starter. No kneading. No ri...

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When it’s time to remove a tree

Mrs. Homegrown

October 22, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening

11 Comments

...the time comes to make changes in your garden. There’s nothing wrong with making changes–the trick is in how they’re made, and why. When you remove a plant and it’s the right thing to do, and it’s done properly, it feels good. Really good. Not just on an aesthetic or practical level, but on a gut level. You don’t miss the plant once its gone. The empty space is hardly noticeable. The garden feels more lively or, conversely, more peaceful. It’s as...

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I made shoes!

Mrs. Homegrown

October 21, 2014

Domesticus

32 Comments

As regular Root Simple readers know, I’ve been obsessing on making shoes for some time now, but was not able to wrap my mind around the process without help. Help arrived this weekend in the form of the wonderful–and wonderfully patient– Randy Fritz, who taught me and four other intrepid souls how to make turnshoes over the course of the last 4 days. Lesson 1: As we have all suspected, shoes are not easy to make. Seriously not easy. Four full day...

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The Ultimate Earth Bed: A Mattress Made of Sand

Mrs. Homegrown

September 6, 2016

Domesticus

18 Comments

...a post called “A Homemade Mattress?” It was just an off-the-cuff complaint fest on my part, but the response to it revealed a vast population of deeply dissatisfied bed users out there in Internetland. It remains one of our most visited posts, and the lengthy comment section is filled with tales of people who, in desperation, have made, modified or improvised their beds in an effort to avoid the mattress industry entirely. It seems many of us are...

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A Lecture on the Connection Between Cats and Grain

Mr. Homegrown

May 24, 2016

Animals, Cats, Events

7 Comments

...uld we have bread? On Saturday June 4th at 2 p.m. at the Los Angeles Bread Festival at Grand Central Market I’m going to deliver a talk on the connection between cats and grain. The connection is a basic one: store grain and you get vermin. Then you need cats. But, in the course of preparing for this lecture, I discovered that the commonly held narrative of cat domestication is an unsubstantiated fiction. That narrative goes something like this: i...

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